KR20140068273A - Personal status communications manager - Google Patents

Abstract

The user state may be updated at one of the plurality of network entities associated with the user. Through communication between the updated network entity and the central server, an indication of the status update can be sent to the other network entities associated with the user by the central server.

Description

{PERSONAL STATUS COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER}

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present application relates generally to office communication management, and more specifically, to a personal status communication manager.

Within the private communications management area, users of personal communications management applications often find it useful to indicate the level of availability.

A given user may be associated with a wide variety of network entities, each of which is associated with a mode of communication and is operable to indicate a level of user's availability.

The user state may be updated at one of the plurality of network entities associated with the user. Through communication between the centralized server and the network entity that has been updated, an indication of the status update can be sent by the central server to other network entities associated with the user.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of facilitating automatic replication of a user state associated with a communication mode of one of a plurality of communication modes, the response comprising a plurality of network entities of a plurality of communication modes . The method includes receiving an indication of occurrence of a trigger event representing a change in the user state associated with the one communication mode; Selecting, based on the trigger event, an instruction associated with a network entity associated with a given communication mode of the plurality of communication modes; And sending the instruction to the network entity to enable the network entity to render the user state in a manner suitable for the network entity. In other aspects of the invention, an apparatus for performing the method is provided, and a computer readable medium is provided for aligning the apparatus to perform the method.

Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Reference will now be made, by way of example, to the drawings, which illustrate embodiments of the invention.
Figure 1 illustrates a network environment to which aspects of the present disclosure may be applicable.
Figure 2 illustrates a structure for a user profile for use in aspects of the present application.
Figure 3 shows an example of a user profile with the structure provided in Figure 2;
FIG. 4 illustrates exemplary steps of a method for facilitating an automatic response of a user state in accordance with aspects of the present application.

Within many calendar applications there is the ability to set out of office notifications that apply to email systems that users have as their preferred email system.

Prior to the present invention, it is not possible to accurately reflect the user's absence status for all of their endpoints, since their coordination of their endpoints and their management were inconsistent.

This creates the problem that the user has to hand manage individual network entities by using explicit proprietary command sequences for that network entity.

Figure 1 illustrates a network environment 100 to which aspects of the present disclosure may be applied, wherein the application server 108 is connected to a wide area data network 104, such as one of today's Internet or its successor networks can see. Typically, the application server 108 may include a processor and may associate long term and short term memory (not shown).

A private branch exchange (PBX) 114 is also connected to the wide area data network 104. The PBX 114 may be additionally connected to the telephone network 106. Although many phones may be connected to the PBX 114, only one exemplary telephone 116 is illustrated in FIG. 1 as being connected to the PBX 114 for desktop telephony. A voice mail server 110 is also connected to the PBX 114 for performing voice mail services such as receiving, storing, and providing voice mail messages. In particular, voice mail server 110 may also be connected to wide area data network 104.

One or more client applications may be executed by a personal computer (PC) 102 that is illustrated as being communicatively coupled to the wide area data network 104. The memory (not shown) of the first PC 102 may be software, such as software, for executing aspects of the present disclosure from a software medium 118, which may be a disk, tape, chip, or random access memory, Lt; / RTI >

Other communication equipment may also form part of the network environment 100 of FIG. E-mail server 128 is illustrated as being connected to wide area data network 104. [ Instant messaging server 120 is also illustrated as being connected to wide area data network 104. In addition, it is illustrated that the video conferencing server 122 is connected to the wide area data network 104. As will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, instant messaging and video conferencing are often handled by endpoints, by a single application, and by a single server at midpoint.

The network environment 100 of FIG. 1 is also illustrated as including a mobile communication device 124 connected to a wireless carrier network 126. The wireless carrier network 126 may include a base station subsystem (not shown) and a wireless network subsystem (not shown). A base station antenna, through which the mobile communication device 124 can communicate wirelessly, is provided as part of the base station subsystem. The base station subsystem connects to a wireless network subsystem (not shown). In part, a wireless network subsystem, which may include a Mobile-services Switching Center (MSC) (not shown), is connected to the wide area data communication network 104.

1, PC 102, telephone 116, and mobile communication device 124 may be considered to be network entities associated with a single user. The application server 108, the voice mail server 110, the instant messaging server 120, the email server 128 and the video conferencing server 122 may be considered to be providers of modes of communication for the user.

Users of Microsoft Outlook ™ combined with Microsoft Exchange ™ servers can be accustomed to the Out of Office assistant, which handles the automatic transmission of preset responses to messages received in the user's email inbox. The preset response may be edited by the user to indicate that the user is away from the office for a predetermined amount of time and will not be able to receive email correspondence.

Similarly, according to the voice mail system, the user can select between normal outgoing greeting and vacation greeting. The vacation greeting indicates that the user is away from the office for a predetermined amount of time and will not contact the voice mail server.

In addition, instant messaging applications have developed more finely grained status indications. The user of the instant messaging application can send status, online; Busy; Coming soon; Away; On the phone; Go out for lunch; Or Appear Offline.

In general, aspects of the present disclosure, a user may display status to only one of the providers of modes of communication. Subsequently, the status can be distributed to all of the providers of modes of communication associated with the user.

To facilitate distribution and coordination of user status updates by application server 108, the user creates and edits user profiles. Such creation and editing can be realized by the user as a client application executed in the PC 102. [ The client application may communicate with the personal status communications manager application running on the processor of the application server 108 via the wide area network 104. [ Alternatively, the user profile may be created and edited by an administrator.

The user profile may be configured to associate a user with network entities and communication modes. The user profile may define a trigger event and associate it with trigger event handling rules that specify actions to be performed by the servers of the modes of communications.

An orchestration is an internal application structure that is smart enough to understand how an incoming event is handled based on a set of user generated handling rules. These rules take the incoming alarm, the OOO alarm with the associated OOO information, and start the process of setting the required alarms.

For example, the voice mail system is identified from the user profile and the incoming user OOO is converted into the relevant format needed for the voice mail system to replay the greeting to the callers, and the user's network entities are then Lt; / RTI > to the voice mail system when it terminates at its network entity. The orchestration engine issues relevant signaling and media control sequences to enforce its forwarding activity, which can be very different for each voice mail system and network entity.

The user's instant messaging system is identified from the profile and then receives the relevant control and media signaling to establish the required notification for the OOO alert.

This sequence of control and media scheduling is repeated for each of the associated devices or network entities in the user profile associated with handling the OOO alert, and each network entity may require very different handling, Do.

Users can now automatically update multiple environments without having to individually update their network entities one by one.

FIG. 2 illustrates a structure 200 for a user profile for use in aspects of the present application. The user profile structure includes a description (202) of a trigger event. For each of the plurality of network entities 206A, 206B, 206C, 206D, 206E, 206F (collectively or individually 206) associated with the user and various communication modes, the user profile structure 200 includes instructions 204A, 204B, 204C, 204D, 204E, 204F (collectively or individually 204).

FIG. 3 shows an example of a user profile 300 having the structure 200 provided in FIG.

4 illustrates exemplary steps of a method that is executed by a processor of an application server 108 to facilitate an automatic response of a user state. Initially, the processor of the application server 108 receives an indication of the occurrence of an event from the network entity associated with the user and the communication mode under the control of the personal state communication manager application (step 402). The personal status communication manager recognizes the event as a "trigger event ". The trigger events may represent, for example, a change in the user state associated with one communication mode.

In response to receiving an indication of an event from a network entity (step 402), the private status communication manager may determine, based on the trigger event 202 (FIG. 2), a network entity associated with a given communication mode of the plurality of communication modes 206 (step 404).

The application server 108 may include a "rule engine" to extract behavioral rules that associate trigger events with instructions for network entities from a user profile. When performing the selection of step 404, the personal state communication manager may simply select the instructions 204 in the order in which the instructions 204 appear in the user profile.

Following the selection of an instruction from the user profile (step 404), the application server sends the selected instruction 204 to the associated network entity 206 (step 406). The network entity executes the command upon receiving the command.

As is known to one of ordinary skill in the art, the application server 108 may be configured with appropriate protocols and signaling schemes for communication with each of the network entities that the application server 108 is expected to communicate with .

Following the sending of the command (step 406), the personal status communication manager determines whether there are any additional commands to be transmitted, according to the user profile 200 (step 408). If it is determined that additional commands to be transmitted remain (step 408), the private state communication manager selects an additional command (step 404) and returns to the selection step to transmit the transmission command (step 406).

Consider a scenario in which a user uses the telephone 116 to connect to the voice mail server 110 via the PBX 114. The user interacts with the interface provided by the voicemail server 110 and indicates that he or she wishes to record an outgoing caller. The user can record an outgoing greeting, say "I'm away, I'm coming back to my office on the 10th." Upon completion of interaction with the voice mail server 110, the user hangs up the telephone 116. In response to the occurrence of a recognized event, that is, a setting of absenteeism, the voicemail server 110 sends an indication of the event to the application server 108.

4, the personal status communication manager receives an indication of the occurrence of an event from the voice mail server 110 (step 402). The personal status communication manager recognizes the setting of the event, that is, the absence voice mail greeting, as a "trigger event" in which the description 302 exists in the user profile 300. [

In response to receiving an indication of an event from the voicemail server 110 (step 402), the personal status communication manager determines, based on the triggering event, whether to associate with the network entity associated with the given communication mode of the plurality of communication modes Command is selected (step 404). Recall that the user profile 300 of FIG. 3 associates separate instructions with each of the five distinct network entities.

For example, the personal status communications manager may select an instruction associated with the email server 128 based on the setting of the missed voice mail greeting trigger event (step 404). Upon selection of an instruction associated with the email server 128 (step 404), the private status communication manager may send an instruction to the email server 128 to turn on the absence assistant (step 406).

The voice mail server 110 may include speech-to-text conversion software. Thus, when displaying to the application server 108 that a missed voice mail greeting trigger event has occurred, the voice mail server also indicates that the outgoing message is set as "I am absent " can do. Considering the appropriate protocol, the personal state communications manager may send an email to the email server 128 (step 406), when it sends an instruction to turn on the assistant absent (step 406) I'm going to come back to my office. "

Alternatively, the voice mail server 110 may send a digital representation of the audio of the outgoing caller to the application server 108. The application server 108 then performs a speech-to-text conversion on the audio, and as part of the instruction to the email server 128, the absentee greetings "I am absent. . "≪ / RTI >

If it is determined that there are additional commands to be sent (step 408), the private status communication manager may select an instruction associated with the IM server 120 (step 404). The private state communications manager may then send a message to the IM server 120 instructing the IM server 120 to change the indication of the user's status to "Away " (step 406).

This selection (step 404) and transmission (step 406) may continue until the private state communication manager determines (step 408) that there are no longer any more instructions associated with the trigger event to be transmitted. In response, the method may be considered complete.

Advantageously, the user can update the status for a single network entity, and the status of the user is updated, as provided by each of the user's associated network entities. Conveniently, the network entity for which the status update is set does not need to understand the signaling and control requirements specific to each of the other network entities.

The associated network entities are managed for the user and provide relevant notifications to users of the mode of communication associated with that network entity with associated exclusive command sequences sent to the network entities to effect a change of state.

The foregoing embodiments of the present application are intended to be examples only. Modifications, modifications, and variations of the specific embodiments can be carried out by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the application defined by the claims appended hereto.

Claims (10)

1. A method for facilitating automatic replication of a user state associated with a communication mode of one of a plurality of communication modes,
Wherein the response is achieved for a plurality of network entities of the plurality of communication modes,
Receiving an indication of occurrence of a trigger event representing a change in the user state associated with the one communication mode;
Selecting, based on the trigger event, an instruction associated with a network entity associated with a given communication mode of the plurality of communication modes; And
Allowing the network entity to render the user state in a manner suitable for the network entity by sending the command to the network entity
≪ / RTI > 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the user state includes an out of office state. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of communication modes comprises voice mail. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of communication modes comprises a desktop telephony. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of communication modes comprises a mobile telephony. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of communication modes comprise instant messaging. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of communication modes comprise video conferencing. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing a user profile, wherein the user profile includes an association between the trigger event, the network entity, and the instruction. Receiving an indication of occurrence of a trigger event representing a change in user state associated with a communication mode of one of a plurality of communication modes;
Based on the trigger event, selecting an instruction associated with a network entity associated with a given communication mode of the plurality of communication modes;
Transmitting the instruction to the network entity, thereby allowing the network entity to render the user state in a manner suitable for the network entity
An application server comprising a processor configured to run a personal state communications manager application. 24. A computer readable medium comprising computer executable instructions,
The computer-executable instructions, when executed by a processor in an application server, cause the processor to:
Receiving an indication of occurrence of a trigger event representing a change in user state associated with a communication mode of one of a plurality of communication modes;
Based on the trigger event, selecting an instruction associated with a network entity associated with a given communication mode of the plurality of communication modes;
And sending the instruction to the network entity to enable the network entity to express the user state in a manner suitable for the network entity.

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